


In the Grey Summer Garden (I’ll Find You)

by fromward (from)



Series: a little singing between two great rests [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/fromward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friendship matters a great deal to Lex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Grey Summer Garden (I’ll Find You)

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2005. Set before events in the first two stories in the series. Title and series title taken from Siegfried Sassoon's 'Idyll'.

1997

 

After a devastating fire of unknown origin, the country house was rebuilt in the neo-Palladian style, Freddie’s mom tells him. How that differs from Palladian is something Lex needs to look up, so he files this information away, and follows her down the Long Room, capital L and capital R.

They have tea in one of the rooms facing west. There are savory cakes and warm, golden biscuits that Lex hasn’t seen the likes of since the Welsh cook left after his mother passed away. Lex allows himself one more before he puts his plate down and compliments her on the chinoiserie wallpaper of moonlit tree branches and the nightingale.

The Scottish lady smiles as she serves him another cup. She tells him that they’re enjoying the tastes of Freddie’s paternal great grandmother, the one not buried in the family mausoleum because she died on the Malabar Coast.

Lex nods in silence, taking a long sip of the tea, trying not to wince as the drink burns his tongue and throat. If someone had cared to inform him that his friend’s flight from Johannesburg had been delayed overnight, he would have scheduled his arrival from London accordingly. He’s never felt comfortable being left alone with the woman sitting in front of him.

The last time it happened was two summers ago, on his first visit to Yorkshire. She took him on a little tour of the conservatory and he listened to an extensive overview of all the species of flora found there for over half an hour. He might admire her mind, but he doesn’t like how it handles all that she won’t see. Lex, for instance.

Freddie gets in at around ten, when Lex is already tucked in bed, reading a book on James II that he picked up from the library after supper. The connecting door between their bedrooms open and Lex can tell that his friend is exhausted.

“Hello, Luthor,” he says, with a grin on his face and a tan hand on the doorjamb. “Been waiting long?”

“Christ, Freddie,” Lex laughs. It’s been raining all day and he is cold because the fire isn’t large enough, but he puts the book down, gets out of bed and pads over to Freddie to give him a hug. “You look like shit.”

Freddie chuckles. “Well, you look smashing in that pair of pajamas.” He surveys the room and then turns back to Lex. “Where’s your equipment?”

“I’ve sent it down with my books.”

“Right.” Freddie lets go of Lex and lumbers to the fireplace. “Why is it so cold? Aren’t you cold?” He lays down more wood. “You’re always cold.”

Lex walks to the four-poster and settles back in his place under the sheets and blankets. “It’s been raining all day.”

“Has it? I think I slept through the whole drive.” Freddie turns and goes to sit at the foot of the bed before he collapses backward with a loud groan. “Dreadful flight.” When Lex says nothing, he leans on one arm and lifts his head to look at Lex, his blond hair falling into his eyes and the cuff of his sweater. He must’ve not cut it all month long. “Loams told me you spent the whole day with Mama,” he says, grinning.

“Yes, I did,” Lex says with the quirk of a smile.

Freddie laughs. “Well, I hope you didn’t like it too much.”

Lex throws the slim book at him and Freddie catches it, quick reflexes showing. Lex wonders if his new co-captain has been practicing while on safari. The idea is so ridiculous that it’s probably true. This is Freddie, after all.

“She’s going to be here until we leave,” Lex asks.

“I’m not sure,” Freddie replies, getting up. “Well, even if she is,” he says as he puts the book down on the small round table where Lex laid down his watch, “this place is big enough for the three of us.”

It’s one of those statements that are never true, except the house has forty-seven rooms and Lex has been lost on the first floor before.

“When are we going to Ganton?”

Freddie is playing with the fire, poking around in the way that only people who have grown up with fireplaces can without looking stupid. “Sadly, they have a handicap requirement.”

“Why does that matter?” Lex rubs his neck, feeling sleepy.

“They won’t let _you_ on the course,” Freddie says without malice.

Lex snorts before an irritating thought ran through his mind. “Freddie, are you planning on leaving me here with your mother while you play a round of golf?”

“No, of course, not, Luthor,” his friend says, sitting in the armchair near the fire. “Who said I was going to Ganton?”

“You talked about it so many times at the start of summer,” Lex says. “I thought you were going to go as soon as you came back.”

“I think we should head down to the village or Skipton or wherever you want to go and gorge on fish and chips.”

“If that’s what you want,” Lex says, grinning. He’s not a big fan of greasy food and he doesn’t appreciate how the locals stare at him, but being able to miss a meal with Freddie’s mother outweighs the negative.

“Good.” Freddie stretches out his long legs and grins back. When he crosses his socked ankles, Lex notices for the first time that he’s not wearing any shoes. It’s uncharacteristic of him.

“Did you take your sabers to Africa?” Lex asks, resting his eyes as he stifles a yawn.

“No, I didn’t, but the owner of the game reserve had a set and I had a few bouts with his daughter and their instructor.”

“How was she?”

“How was she? Well…” Freddie’s back on the bed again, the mattress fighting against his weight. Lex opens his eyes and lifts an eyebrow. “No, no,” Freddie laughs. “She’s thirty and married, with two children. Reminded me of my eldest sister, actually,” he says. “She did have a cousin, in her early twenties, goes to Edinburgh.” Freddie moves up the bed and starts fixing a couple of pillows to lay his head on. There’s so much tapping and rustling that Lex almost doesn’t hear it: “Too bad she was a dyke.”

Lex’s smirk turns into a snigger. “Still haven’t lost it, have you?”

“Don’t be such a smug wanker, Luthor.” Freddie looks mad, but doesn’t sound it. He never does. “She really was a dyke. She kept a picture of her girlfriend in her wallet. I saw it. She showed it to me.”

Lex laughs and looks at Freddie from the corner of his eye. “Well, Freddie, why don’t you tell me about your trip then. I have a feeling you’re dying to give me an account of how you hit on a lesbian and got shot down.”

He gets a hard punch on the arm before Freddie starts with the flight – dreadful, of course – out to South Africa.

 

*

 

The next day, Freddie is so groggy when he wakes up that his mother orders him to go back to bed.

Lex shrugs and settles down with his book, happy to take his breakfast upstairs.

When Freddie sleeps through lunch, Lex eats all the cold sandwiches.

Dinner is a three-hour event, but Freddie’s second sister arrives at the beginning and stays for the night. Lex enjoys her company and it’s even better when he gets to sit and read while the siblings bicker over a game of cards and then a couple of rounds at the Playstation.

Brushing his teeth before bed, Lex wonders what it’s like to grow up with sisters, or brothers for that matter. Freddie is the youngest of four children and the only male. Lex thinks it must be strange for the sisters to know that the estate will fall into his hands, bypassing all of them. If Julian had lived, his father would make him and Lex duke it out. There’s no doubt about that.

“Fish and chips tomorrow?”

“Fish and chips tomorrow,” Lex says, looking at Freddie in the mirror. Freddie’s head ducks out of the bathroom and Lex hears his friend go through his room to get to his own. Lex spends a few more minutes finishing up.

When he undresses, he can hear Freddie jumping into bed on the other side of the wall. Freddie grew so much in the past year and it’s obvious that he’s still not used to his own body. It’s why Lex has been giving him room, too, whenever they’re walking together. Being careful has never hurt Lex before and he never knows when Freddie might elbow him in the gut.

Lex, on the other hand, is as lithe as he was two years ago. Taller, yes, but not broader. He’s all right with that. No one ever complains anyhow.

Staring up at the ceiling, he thinks of the gangly Austrian girl he had great sex with in Vienna and smiles. He plays with his semi-hard cock for a while and decides to save the jacking off for his morning shower. He’s tired and it’s not something that Freddie needs to overhear. Not yet, an ignored voice in his head says.


End file.
